About 600 nursing graduates roam the streets
Chakalisa Dube | Monday June 20, 2022 06:00
Rahube disclosed the figures in an interview on Wednesday at the union’s elective congress that comes to an end today (Friday).
“This year we have had 320 graduates and in 2021 we had 326 graduates. These are graduates from the University of Botswana and Institutes of Health Sciences IHS). The bulk of the graduates remain unemployed,” Rahube told Mmegi.
The government, which is the biggest employer, has in recent years not been automatically absorbing nursing graduates as per the norm owing to budgetary constraints amongst other reasons.
Earlier, in his main address at the congress, Rahube said to counter the rising number of unemployed nursing graduates, BONU has taken a resolution to engage government and political leaders to lobby Western countries to ease a lot of restrictions that hinder nursing graduates from getting employment in those respective countries.
One of the restrictions is a requirement for those seeking employment in Western countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) to take an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) English proficiency test.
Rahube said that nurses in countries such as South Africa are not required to take tests and as a result they can easily find employment in Western countries.
“We believe that an English proficiency test is not necessary because the medium of instruction in all our schools is English,” Rahube said.
“We have engaged, unsuccessfully, former ministers of foreign affairs to assist us in the matter (get Western countries to abolish the requirement of an English proficiency test) but to no avail. We will continue to lobby government and political leaders to have their buy in.”
BONU with its collaboration with the NEU Professionals recently recruited 60 nurses from the Ministry of Health to the UK. The number is expected to rise as close to 800 nurses have expressed desire to relocate to the UK. There are fears that the exodus of nurses could cripple the health system.
NEU Professionals is an international healthcare recruitment agency headquartered in London. It was established in 2013 with the aim of helping NHS Trusts and Health Boards with the recruitment of nurses from overseas to the UK.
At the congress, Rahube also expressed his frustrations about the government’s sluggishness towards tackling concerns of nurses.
“We want issues that border on the welfare of our members to be solved amicably but the pace and lack of seriousness on matters that affect our members push us to the extreme,” he said.
Amongst the issues is BONU/Botswana Health Professions Council (BHPC) case involving nurses who did a degree in Public Health. Following completion, they approached BHPC for registration for practice. BHPC declined arguing that they cannot register them because they are nurses. BHPC lost the case with costs. However, Rahube said the BHPC registrar is in contempt of court as it has not abided with the judgement.
“There are other pending issues which our ministry is dragging leaving BONU with no option but to seek the redress from the courts of law,” he said.
Rahube also emphasised the need to revamp the Nursing and Midwifery Act. He pointed out that the Act is old and does not reflect the current trends in the health sector.
The position of the union is that the Act should be reviewed to include the independence of the regulatory body and should ensure the inclusion of a host of other nursing qualifications in the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Botswana (NMCB) register for the ‘comfort of mind’ for those who hold such qualification.
“Nurses have also raised the issue of decentralisation of the annual practicing licence renewal. This year has been the worst year of our renewal and this calls for your office to speedily intervene. This goes together with printing of practicing certificates with members being abused by their supervisors when they produce receipts of that they have conformed to all requirements,” he said.